Tidings Of Unease And Foreboding

This is the last posting of 2025. I just wish I could be more optimistic. But the lunatics have taken over the asylum and it looks like they might burn it to the ground.

WAY BACK WHEN . . .

As he left office in January 1961 outgoing US President Dwight D Eisenhower (R) warned against what he called the “military-industrial complex” (MIC).

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.

Eisenhower’s successor was Democrat John Fitzgerald Kennedy. For failing to use US troops for an invasion of Cuba, and for refusing to sanction the war the MIC wanted in Vietnam, JFK was assassinated.

Kennedy said many things. But let’s remember that he wanted to, ” . . . splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the winds”.

For by the early 1960s the Central Intelligence Agency had become a law unto itself, allied with the MIC; free of political oversight, forming its own foreign policy, and acting independently both at home and overseas.

Perhaps they got a taste for it in 1953, when they helped MI6 overthrow the democratically-elected nationalist prime minister in Persia, Mohammad Mosaddegh. Handing all power to the Western puppet whose excesses led to the 1979 revolution and the return of Ayatollah Khomeini.

Interestingly, that revolution saw socialists and Islamists combine to overthrow the Shah. The comrades were soon gobbled up by the tiger they were riding.

To explain . . . the military-industrial complex is an alliance of US corporations involved in the production of armaments and other military necessities aligned with with gung-ho generals (aka ‘The Pentagon’) and the agency that is supposed to monitor and counter overseas threats to the US homeland.

The collective term often used is the ‘Deep State’.

For these people, and as Tom Paxton sang in Daily News:

Ban the bombers are afraid of a fight
Peace hurts business and that ain’t right

At its simplest; war is good for corporate business, it wins gongs for generals and admirals, while sociopaths in Langley VA can bring about the next war through false flag operations, propaganda, or whatever. Or they can while away the hours organising regime change hither and yon.

We see them exposed in Kubrick’s 1964 masterpiece Dr Strangelove: Brig Gen Jack Ripper, good ole boy Maj ‘King’ Kong (who unforgettably rides the bomb), Col ‘Bat’ Guano, Gen ‘Buck’ Turgidson.

THE WORLD TURNS UPSIDE DOWN

The military-industrial complex was largely a creature of the political right, as was the CIA. Democrats, and liberals more generally, opposed their machinations.

But as the USA suffered financial crises, moved factories overseas, the once-mighty auto industry struggled against foreign competition, with the advent of computers and the internet, the face of American capitalism changed. And with it, political influence.

We had a new generation of multi-billionnaires, many of whom can fairly be described as geeks, but with the power to influence the thinking of the masses. This was coupled with the rise of hedge funds and asset managers, who made nothing, they just invested other people’s money to enrich themselves and gain immense political power.

Without getting in over my head, or risk being called a conspiracy theorist, the Deep State soon realised the power of the new media and the new money. And began co-operating with both.

But there was a slight problem. The geeks and others tended be more liberal in their outlook than the CEO of arms manufacturer Kill All Commie Bastards Inc. They gravitated towards the Democrats rather than towards the Republicans.

I believe there was an uncomfortable accommodation with the new oligarchy that saw the Deep State become for a period bi-partisan, and now, bizarrely, closer to the Democrats than the Republicans.

In fact, those in Donald Trump’s administration talk openly of dismantling the Deep State, defunding it’s money-laundering NGOs and other agencies, and putting an end to the ‘forever wars’ on which the military-industrial complex thrived for decades.

Perhaps even doing away with ‘The Fed‘. Which was set up by bankers to serve bankers. Now Trump wants the US economy to serve the people by concentrating on the ‘real’ economy.

What a novelty!

Big Money is not happy. That includes the City of London. Explained in this video.

Then again, considering that the Deep State sought to imprison him, perhaps even assassinate him, you can understand why Trump’s not too well disposed towards it.

Because the internet is global, and so is money, the new elite often sees a world without borders. Through this mindset, plus their co-operation with supranational bodies like the UN, WEF, Club of Rome, they attracted the soubriquet ‘Globalists’.

The Deep State can go along with this because while Microsoft or BlackRock want to unite the human race like that old Coke advert, they remain US corporations, extending US influence.

THE NEW ALLIANCE IN OPERATION

The Deep State-Globalist alliance now extends its malign influence across the Western world; done through converting/subverting elites, funding educational establishments, buying media, and thereby corrupting countries.

When BlackRock CEO Larry Fink visited London last year to give Starmer and his crew their orders he was presented as a successful businessman, and a ‘good guy’; as opposed to Trump and his associates who – thanks to a media largely controlled by Fink and his ilk – are the bad guys, the ‘far right’, even fascist.

For as we are reminded after every Islamist atrocity – by that same media – the biggest terror threat to the West comes from ‘far right extremism’.

The next element to join the Deep State-Globalist march to ultimate power was the left. Feeling low after the collapse of the Soviet bloc, and China abandoning the centralised economy model, socialists were at a bit of a loose end.

But the impulse to destroy the capitalist West, demolish churches, and unite the global proletariat remained.

Which chimed perfectly with the Globalist vision of a world controlled by them with no competing loyalties such as family, nation, or religion.

And so the most absurd ideas of the revamped left were encouraged. Women have penises, white people (particularly men) are dangerous, boys are girls and girls are boys, secure elections are racist, while religion is a pernicious evil from which mankind must be freed . . . but Islam’s just fine.

For in its assault on the West the Globalists also needed Islam, but there weren’t enough Muslims here to really pose a threat. So from 2016 or so Europe was told to open its doors to hundreds of thousands of ‘refugees’, people escaping war and persecution. (Wars often started by the Deep State.)

The same thing happened under Biden (or whoever was running the USA).

But the over-arching scam used to weaken and demoralise the West through deindustrialisation, and employed to control human behaviour, while also being used to grab land and other resources, was the ‘Climate Crisis’, and the carefully orchestrated hysteria over carbon levels in the atmosphere.

Both now exposed as utter bullshit.

HOW THE EU FITS

From a Globalist perspective, the European Union represents the future model they’d like to impose on the world.

To begin with, at national level, voters are offered a ‘choice’ from establishment parties and politicians that answer to the Globalists. Parties and politicians that don’t toe the Globalist line are persecuted.

We saw this with Trump under the Biden administration, we see it Europe with Marine le Pen banned from standing for the French presidency, moves to ban AfD in Germany, the demonisation of Reform and Farage, elections and referendums being re-run from Romania to Ireland until the ‘right’ result is achieved.

Politicians from these Globalist-approved parties are elected to the European Parliament. Where they are ultimately impotent. The President of the EU Parliament since January 2022 is Roberta Metsola. You ever heard of her? Nor me.

That’s because the EU is run like the old Soviet Union. The Parliament is a talking shop. Decisions are made by the politburo, which in the EU is the Commission. Headed by the unelected Ursula von der Leyen. You’ve all heard of her.

Which means that some 450 million people are effectively ruled by one woman that nobody voted for – but she’s a loyal Globalist.

This explains why another Globalist puppet, PM Keir Starmer, who has done so much for Ukraine (especially its young ‘male models’), is taking the UK back into the EU, step by step.

Because those are his orders.

BUT HOW DOES IT END?

Globalism is cornered, but far from defeated.

Having its grip on the USA loosened by President Trump, and with Latin America turning against them, it was inevitable that the Deep-State-Globalists would focus increasingly on Europe.

But this side of the Atlantic don’t look a whole lot better for them.

Their puppets are reviled, especially those leading the three major European economies. (With Italy less and less willing to obey EU diktats.) ‘Insurgent’ parties head the polls in France, Germany, and the UK. Countries in the east are in open revolt against the EU over immigration and funding for the war in Ukraine.

As the BBC reported it: “Hungary and Slovakia are known to be closer to the Kremlin.” Er, no, closer to sanity would be nearer the mark. But that’s how the media operates: join in the madness or be branded a “puppet of Putin“.

But a cornered animal is dangerous. And desperate.

For while BlackRock and others have major investments in Ukraine, the ultimate target, the whole point of this war, is to weaken and hopefully defeat, Russia. Then to seize as ‘reparations’ the vast resources of that huge country. But it’s not going to happen.

For no matter how much Western aid Ukraine has received, in funding, in armaments, military ‘advisers’, intelligence, it’s losing.

And that’s why we hear silly talk now of Russia threatening the West. To justify all-out war. But there’ll be little support from ordinary people in the West. They’ve been lied to too often; on Covid, Net Zero, DEI, open borders. They live with the results.

So the Globalists are staring at the loss of money and power.

While for Starmer, Merz, Macron, von der Leyen, and the other Globalist puppets, war has become their only hope of survival.

Their economies are collapsing, their peoples are in revolt, so war will allow them to declare martial law, impose complete censorship, cancel elections, bring in Digital ID, restrict movement, impose rationing, and make our lives even more miserable.

And by so doing usher in the age of full and untrammeled Globalist control.

But for the time being, masters and servants are so desperate that they might resort to anything to save their miserable skins. So be on your guard. Make your feelings known to the elite. And don’t believe anything the Globalist media tells you.

Russia has no intention of attacking the West. But she will respond if she’s attacked.

So don’t support a war to save Globalism and its beleaguered elites.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2025

Chilcot and Iraq, All You Really Need to Know

Having read the full Chilcot Report on the invasion of Iraq by the USA and the UK – in the original Latin – I have decided to spare my readers that ordeal by giving a succinct summary of what lies behind that disaster and why we are where we are.

However, for the masochists among you, here’s a link to the Executive Summary. This runs to 150 pages, but the full Report is 2.6 million words long, or over four times the size of War and Peace, so don’t even think about reading it.

For all you need to know, read on . . .

1/ The best place to start is with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. From the perspective of the Pentagon, the CIA and the State Department at that time, anyone who fought against communism was a ‘freedom-fighter’, be he a drug-trafficking fascist, a mass-murdering psychopath or, as in Afghanistan, a religious fanatic wanting to turn the clock back a few centuries.

And so it came to pass that Uncle Sam ended up funding, arming and in other ways supporting the Bearded Ones in their fight against the Russians. (No, these were not hipsters.)

Beards

In the same year, the major US ally in the region, the Shah of Iran, was forced into exile by another bunch of Bearded Ones. There was further humiliation for the USA when its Tehran embassy was overrun and 66 US citizens taken hostage.

2/ Next, in September 1980, hostilities commenced between Iran and Iraq. Despite Iraq being ruled by a ruthless tyrant named Saddam Hussein, who began his career as an assassin for the Ba’ath Party, the USA decided – on the ‘enemy of my enemy’ principle – to back (the beardless) Saddam.

After massive losses on both sides the inconclusive war came to its end with the ceasefire of August 20th 1988.

3/ Saddam Hussein decided to flex his military muscles again by invading Kuwait in August 1990 – using weaponry supplied by Western powers during the war with Iran. This invasion was widely condemned, and a UN-supported coalition force was organised under US leadership to liberate Kuwait.

A brief military campaign at the start of 1991 saw the Iraqi army expelled and Kuwait restored to its former condition of Western-friendly despotism. However, the coalition stopped short of toppling Saddam, who then took revenge on his Kurdish and Shia subjects, who had been encouraged to rise against him by the USA and its partners with the promise of protection and / or Saddam’s removal.

The US president at the time of the ‘liberation’ of Kuwait was George H W Bush.

4/ With the Russians gone Afghanistan descended into civil war, from which emerged victorious, in 1996, the fundamentalist (and well bearded) Taliban, but nobody paid them too much attention because they were the good guys who’d fought against Ronald Reagan’s ‘Evil Empire‘.

The Taliban takeover allowed Saudi national Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda organisation to return from its four-year exile in Sudan. (Bin Laden was never seen without his beard.) Al-Qaeda is a Sunni Muslim terrorist organisation that views the West as a corrupting influence on the Islamic world, and it announced its war on the West with attacks on US embassies in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi in August 1998.

5/ Unpleasant though these incidents were they were both a long way away, but everything changed with al-Qaeda’s attack on the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City on September 11th, 2001.

In response, Afghanistan was invaded, and it was soon realised that 9/11, as it became known, could also be used as an excuse to remove Saddam Hussein. For by now the US president was George W Bush, son of the president Bush who had lost face by leaving Saddam in power.

Attacking Iraq was a curious decision for many reasons. As I’ve said, Osama bin Laden was a Saudi, many of his funders and supporters were Saudis, most of the hijackers on the planes that caused such devastation were Saudis. So if any country should have been attacked in response to 9/11 it was surely Saudi Arabia! But no, for the Saudis and the Americans were friends.

6/ But this time there was to be no UN support, and no grand coalition. Russia, Germany, France and most other countries opposed US action against Iraq. So to give himself a fig leaf / partner George W Bush turned to the UK, and its prime minister Tony Blair. At a meeting on his Texas ranch in April 2002 Bush got Blair to commit the UK to joining with the USA in invading Iraq and removing Saddam Hussein. (Bush and Blair have never been seen bearded.)

Three months later Blair wrote his now infamous memo to Bush in which he promised, “I will be with you, whatever”.

My view has always been that Blair was seduced by the opportunity to play a world role in partnership with the USA, and so he allowed himself to be talked into invading Iraq. A country that had nothing to do with 9/11 and led by a man who was as hostile to the Bearded Ones as Western leaders. (And who understood far better what he was dealing with.)

Fundamentally, the problem may have been that Blair allowed it all to go to his head, he seemed to think that he too was a president, rather than a prime minister answerable to parliament. That he was able to get away with it exposed weaknesses in the UK system that seem to have been overlooked. What steps have been taken to ensure that no future prime minister can behave like a one-man government?

Bush Blair

7/ The planned invasion then had to be justified. Which saw a year or more in which we heard one ludicrous claim after another telling us how dangerous Saddam Hussein was, and what a threat he was to the West. Why! he had missiles that could target British bathers on Cyprus beaches.

This is when we became familiar with the term Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), which it was claimed – by the US and UK – Saddam possessed, and was preparing to use. The problem with this assertion was that United Nations weapons inspectors that were in the country, and free to go wherever they wished, could find absolutely nothing to substantiate these claims. That was because the claims were bullshit, and those making the claims knew they were bullshit.

Bush, Blair and their underlings knew that Iraq had no nuclear, chemical or biological weapons but the pretence had to be maintained. In his State of the Union address on January 28th 2003 George Bush said, “If Saddam Hussein does not fully disarm, for the safety of our people and for the peace of the world, we will lead a coalition to disarm him.” Saddam Hussein was being told to get rid of weapons he didn’t possess otherwise his country would be invaded! Clearly the USA was going to invade Iraq, and sure enough, Operation Iraqi Freedom began on March 19th 2003.

8/ The invasion itself went swimmingly, the Iraqi army was soon rolled up and the media showed us grateful Iraqis dancing in the streets and showering their liberators with gifts. British forces were given territory in the Shia heartlands of the south east to control, in and around the city of Basra, not far from Iran. Then it all started to go wrong.

The sudden and complete removal of Saddam’s army and police, coupled with the reluctance of the US and UK military to antagonise the locals, resulted in looting and more general criminality becoming widespread. The political situation deteriorated by the day as the Iranians encouraged the Shia majority to exercise its new-found power through its militias. While Saddam’s now dis-empowered and jobless Sunni supporters grew ever more bitter as they envisioned a Shia-run Iraq.

In the north, the Kurds effectively withdrew from the crumbling state and set up their own institutions.

The truth was that no one in the US-UK alliance really had a clue what might happen after Saddam was toppled. It was all wishful thinking premised on the aftermath of D-Day: Go in, kick out the bad guys, be welcomed as liberators, drink some booze and lay a few chicks, set out the rules for a pro-Western system of government, go home to ticker-tape welcome . . . more booze and chicks.

If only!

9/ What actually happened after the initial welcome was years of fighting between coalition forces and Shia militias or Sunni insurgents. The country fell apart. A major contribution to the upsurge in hostility to the occupying forces was the decline in public amenities, health care and other facilities, this being the inevitable result of the gratuitous destruction of infrastructure by the coalition at the start of the campaign, largely done for the entertainment of the television audience in the West.

Saddam Hussein was unquestionably a bastard, but he wasn’t particularly ideological, and he certainly wasn’t driven by religious zeal, nor was he especially greedy. He certainly liked power and used it as he thought necessary to hold together an artificial and fissiparous country bequeathed by the Sykes-Picot carve-up during WWI.

But as Iraqis were soon to lament, under Saddam they at least had electricity, and a working sewage system, the hospitals had drugs and doctors, there was public transport, kids went to school and on to university. Compared to the ‘liberation’ Iraq under Saddam Hussein began to look like a lost golden age.

10/ Democracy (of a sort) was installed . . . or another way of putting it would be that Shia sectarianism was empowered. For the Shia majority, with its (lavishly bearded) leaders controlled by Iran, now ruled the roost and were determined to make the Sunni – of whom Saddam was nominally one – pay for the years in which they, the Sunni, had ruled that same roost at the expense of Shia and Kurds.

The resentment felt by the Sunni resulted in attacks on the US military, and on Shia shrines and other targets. To cut a long story short, it was the treatment meted out to the Sunni by the USA and the Shia – who were backed, bizarrely, by both the USA and Iran – that created the conditions in which Sunni ISIS could establish itself and flourish.

And that’s where we are today, boys and girls.

CONCLUSION

With no clear plan beyond settling a family score by getting rid of Saddam Hussein, and grabbing Iraq’s oilfields and other assets for vice president Dick Cheney’s Halliburton and other US companies, George W Bush didn’t really know what he was doing. His ally, or perhaps his dupe, Tony Blair, deluded himself that this was some noble crusade against evil. Even today Blair argues that he did the right thing. One’s a duplicitous and devious idiot, the other’s a self-deluding zealot who, like so many who have done great wrong, now finds solace in religion.

Halliburton

They blundered in, blundered about for a few years, wrecking an entire country, strengthening Iran, causing the rise of ISIS, before blundering out, little wiser about the country they’d destroyed than when they invaded.

Add disastrous military escapades like Iraq and Afghanistan to globalisation and immigration and you explain the increasing alienation of the white working class in the USA and in post-industrial regions across Europe. Which in turn explains the popularity of Donald Trump (and Bernie Sanders), Brexit, Marine le Pen and a host of other examples showing growing public contempt for what had been the established political order.

President George W Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair told us that by invading Iraq they were making the world a safer place. The world is now infinitely more dangerous, both from external foes and also from internal divisions due to the discrediting of the Anglo-Saxon, transatlantic political and economic model (the latter following the Crash of 2008).

When millions of voters are prepared to put their faith in Nigel Farage you know just how badly Bush and Blair fucked up. That is their legacy.